Cracking

A week or so ago, Pascoe identified a swift and economical meal he had not mastered.  He is an ingenious and enthusiastic chef with a special way with offal and a reputation for going up to the butcher in Norwich market and asking if he has “anything interesting”.  So it should have been easy for me to teach him to make an omelette.

Except for one thing – I hadn’t realised he would have only a bare week at home at Easter. If I had, I wouldn’t have spent half of it visiting my parents in Cornwall – I would have postponed. 

Pascoe arrived a week after the end of term – he had been wrestling to lick his final year project into shape.  (Probably lick is the wrong word as he is studying food-poisoning bacteria).  He spent the week he had with us on a first draft.  Even on our short break in the Peaks, he retreated to the kitchen with his laptop, his microphone and his dictation software.  Unfortunately, this probably means that his dissertation is peppered with phrases like “No – no milk for me thank you,” and “Do you mind if I have a third biscuit”.

But on the last mealtime of the last day at our house, he got cracking.  My main contribution was to tell him that the pan needed to be hot and that we put eggshells in the compost bin.  Voila.  Perfect omelettes for all of us.